THE ETERNAL MEMORY – Review by Lois Alter Mark

“Without memory, we don’t know who we are,” wrote Augusto Góngora in Chile: La Memoria Prohibida (Chile: The Forbidden Memory), a book he co-authored about the atrocities committed during the country’s 17-year Pinochet dictatorship. “Without memory, there is no identity.”

In a heartbreaking twist of irony, filmmaker Maite Alberdi captures the well-respected Chilean journalist years later, suffering with Alzheimer’s disease, lamenting to his beloved wife, whose face is unrecognizable to him most of the time, “I’m not myself anymore.”

In this achingly beautiful documentary, Alberdi parallels Góngora’s professional success in keeping his country’s memories alive with his personal struggle to keep his own memories alive – a battle he can not win. His disease is ravaging his mind much the way the Pinochet regime ravaged Chile.

Thanks to Alberdi’s masterful direction, though, the film has a surprisingly light and hopeful feel. The director, an Oscar nominee for the delightfully unique The Mole Agent, stays out of the picture and lets her subjects’ actions speak for themselves.

Because of that, the film is, above all, a love story. Góngora’s wife – actress turned Chile’s Minister of Arts and Culture, Paulina Urrutia – is a soothing presence, always treating Góngora tenderly and handling even the most difficult situations with grace and humor. When she cries because he hasn’t recognized her all day, it is especially devastating because we understand how bad it must have been to have made her reach this breaking point. Nevertheless, she persisted.

Alberdi intersperses everyday scenes with old family videos and news footage to show us Góngora as a vibrant young reporter, husband and father. It quickly becomes evident how much the disease has stripped away.

In Chile: The Forbidden Memory, Góngora had written, “This book is only helpful if memory helps us recover our identity.” Góngora passed away in May at the age of 71 and I have to believe this documentary will help his family and friends remember him as the passionate fighter who helped to improve his country rather than simply a man who spent nine years with Alzheimer’s disease.

Moving and poignant, it’s not surprising that The Eternal Memory won the Grand Jury Prize for World Documentary at Sundance. It’s a powerful primer on how to show compassion and grace in the face of adversity and I will never forget it.